A young man, Gabriel Fouquet, arrives in a coastal town in Normandy to visit his daughter, who is staying in a boarding school. He ends up lodging in a guesthouse run by the aged Albert Quentin and his wife Suzanne. To forget his troubles, Gabriel hits the bottle, not realising that the teetotal Albert was once a heavy drinker. Twenty years ago, the latter pledged never to touch alcohol again if he and his wife survived the war. Through his friendship with Gabriel, Albert becomes nostalgic about his past, recalling his time as a sailor on an expedition to China. To drown their sorrows, the two men embark on a drinking binge which quickly gets out of hand…